The Murdoch effect

Phones have proved to be the nemesis for Britain’s oldest newspaper — News of the World (NoTW) — and the news of the world is that the symbiotic relationship between phones and journalists has become cancerous. That the latter cannot exist without the former has been the joke in the journalistic world for long. Talking on phone is easier than trudging up to meet somebody in person. It also saves time. Once cultivated, sources usually divulge the big news on phone and stories carrying information about one part of the world can be written sitting in another. But all is fine as long as we tread within the ethical domain and do not turn news gathering into eaves dropping, or worse.

NoTW, which published its last edition on 10 July after 168 years of existence, did just that. In its zeal to be on top of news it got inextricably enmeshed in the process of creating news. It hired services of investigative agencies which would hack into voice mails of people to gather information. In the case of a then kidnapped teenager Milly Dowler, the hacking of the voicemail box led her parents into the false belief that she was alive when she had already been murdered. Stories of the dirty tricks being adopted by NoTW reporters had been doing the rounds since 2005. But it was a whistleblower on the Dowler case published in The Guardian on 4 July that did NoTW in.

The paper had already been incurring losses. The immediate reaction of Rupert Murdoch — folding up the paper — initially looked like a tactical move by the media mogul to save the chances of being able to buy a lucrative television channel BSkyB. It never came to that. The public outrage over the revelations was so great that Murdoch had to withdraw the bid. Several conciliatory and remedial steps were subsequently taken but to little avail. The damage had been done.

The Murdochisation of media (read: thinking only of profits and treating the newspaper not as a medium of social communication but as a product which can be and has to be sold at any cost just like shampoo and soaps) has not left even India untouched. Though so far no media organization has been accused of tapping phones for the sake of getting stories, that being the preserve of the government and the intelligence agencies here, there have been enough cases of journalists being caught on tape discussing ministerial berths and passing information from one party to the other with obvious implications.

There have been very many other instances as well of Indian media houses entering into unethical barter deals and ‘creating news’ for money or planting biased reports in return for favours. The issue is not of journalists tapping phones but a broader issue of ethics. NoTW used phones to pry into the lives of people for the sake of stories, Indian journalists have been schmoozing with corporate brokers for the sake of personal gains. Some may argue that this is worse than trying to collect information for the good of the paper or making sales grow.
Amidst wide-spread condemnation of the tactics adopted by Murdoch and sons for the sake of sensationalism, there are also some voices of dissent which say he brought life to British media and revived its fortunes. This can also be said for one of the most successful media empires in India. But Indian media still respects the privacy of people’s lives to a large extent and doesn’t stoop to the level that tabloids in Britain have.

The NoTW case also brings to light the inevitability of news gatherers going to extremes for the sake of unearthing something different. In the age of Facebook and Twitter when everything and every information is available at the touch of a button, how does one create content which is exclusive? Cut-throat competition legitimises going to any extent for the sake of a scoop. Reporters are hounded endlessly by desperate editors to bring something different. Discussing private lives in public is what we have learnt from social networking. Is it any surprise then that a media house resorted to tapping phones of ‘news worthy’ people? What would have they learnt by tapping the phone of Afghan war veterans — possibly what kind of excesses were being committed by both the sides on war front. That would be both sensational and interesting. And if in turn it helps bring to light injustice done in the name of war, probably no harm in it either. But the same thing becomes unacceptable if it destroys somebody’s reputation or jeopardizes somebody’s life. As happened in the case of Dowler. If the girl had not been murdered or if the tapping had led to the murderer, probably it would all have been for a good cause.

Media houses which engage in sting operations take this risk all the time. It is the ultimate thrill for a reporter to be present at the scene of ‘crime’ while it is still being committed. There would have been nothing better for the ‘rogue’ NoTW reporters, when they were eavesdropping on phone conversations, than getting the story from the horse's mouth. Even if they had been able to see the outcome of their actions some years later, it is unlikely that any of them would have liked to trade their places with someone else. It is only when a sting goes badly wrong that everybody's wrath turns on the third person who had been trying to pry too deep rather than on the actual culprit. There is ultimately a thin line between right and wrong here.

(Aside: Etymologists would find an uncanny similarity between Murdoch and murder. Co-incidently, the name is also close to Mordor: the fabled dwelling place of the evil one — Sauron — in JRR Tolkien's mythical universe of Middle-Earth in Lord of the Rings).

- Shalini S Sharma

The Save Food Conference

Something that most of us are taught in childhood — to finish everything on our plates or to take only what we can finish eating, was the subject of another international conference at this year’s interpack in May in Dusseldorf. I attended a similar conference during the iPackIma event in Milan in 2009 as well, but the recent conference was better organised, attended and focussed.

On the first day of the Save Food Conference we were told that consumers with high levels of education and those who fail to write a shopping list are more likely to waste food. A survey carried out across seven European countries by the German packaging group Cofresco found that more than 20% of household food expenditure in Europe was spent on food which is thrown away, and that more than half of that waste could have been avoided with better planning. Half of the wasted food consists of fruits and vegetables while 30% of packaged food is thrown away without even being opened. Dirk Lohmer, the CEO of Cofresco told the participants, “Only 6% of the respondents even admit that they throw food away.”

Subsequent presentations at the conference estimated world food losses at around 1.3 billion tonnes with the greatest share of this being fruit and vegetables. Europe throws away 71 million tonnes of food each year. Ulf Sonesson of the Swedish Institute for Food and Biotechnology said that a study conducted last year had found major differences in food wastage between the developed world and developing economies. In developed countries, food losses were very low at the start of the supply chain — at the farm end — but very high at the retailer/consumer end of the chain.

However, in the poorer and less developed economies, the opposite trend was observed — very high wastage at harvest and low wastage by consumers. According to Sonesson, a lack of supply chain infrastructure, including packaging, was at the heart of the food waste problem in developing economies.

The conference had some interesting presentations such as how to reduce food losses through international cooperation and exchange of post harvest technologies. Kenneth Marsh who made this presentation recommended a knowledge supermarket. The conference clearly tried to encourage entrepreneurship and investment in food processing and packaging technology in the less developed and emerging economies. As far as what packaging can do for the food supply chain, it was well argued that when packed, food waste and food losses are reduced by a factor of ten. That increase in packaging cost by Rs 50,000 can reduce food waste by as much Rs 15 lakh.

However, it was also clear that while international bodies talk this talk and even support institutions in the developing countries, there are miles to go before there is global harmonisation of phytosanitary standards. The issue of trade barriers by the rich countries and their huge subsidies to their farmers was also raised both by the moderator of the conference and by a participant in the audience without any real response. Thus there is still a huge disconnect between do-gooders, consultants, and even businesspersons who appreciate the opportunity to invest in food processing and packaging in the emerging economies on the one hand, and the governments of the rich countries who have been holding up the international talks on trade barriers for agricultural products, on the other.

- Naresh Khanna